Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (19 page)

“We did,” Lincoln hissed, his wrinkled lips churning and working as he considered. “We did indeed. But it is so unbelievable…”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And it
is
true. Like I said, four open frequencies now.” He swallowed, relishing the fact that he had the opportunity to add, “This one’s clear.”

Lincoln, on the verge of returning to his striding about the room, squawked like an exotic bird. “Clear?”

“Yes. We’re getting no broadcast. Not the Blanket, not a voice, not music, just… white noise.”

The few snoopers who remained in the workshop seemed to sense Lincoln’s burgeoning outburst from the way his crooked frame straightened over a period of several seconds. They shuffled out while Lincoln strode forwards, taut as steel cable, and laid a hand on the radio—so superstitious a gesture that Latif frowned. “What?”

Lincoln huffed quietly. “For so long I worked on these wretched things in the Early Years. It was different then; I still hoped things could go back to the way they were—half the time I was convinced it was all a dream. How many times I thought I was going insane, picking through each frequency, listening to that same wail… hoping there might be one sliver…” He broke off, his lip trembling.

Latif waited, said nothing, just watched Lincoln take his hand off the radio. “I’m sorry, my boy. I don’t think I’ll ever believe it, not quite. It’s your time to do the real detective work.”

“Fine,” Latif said. He tried a smile but found there was too much adrenaline in his system; his face felt paralysed.

Evelyn appeared in the doorway, an imperious shadow draped in lengths of shawl, as much a part of the encampment as the walls themselves. “Progress?” she said.

“You have no idea,” Latif said.

“Enlighten me.” She stepped into the workroom and closed the door behind her, cutting off the noise from outside. In her doing so, Latif caught a guarded air about her, as though she were ready to voice disapproval.

A sliver of guilt stirred inside him. So focused had his attention on the radio been that he had scarcely given a thought to what was going on outside; while he had enjoyed an escape to a timeless world of exciting discovery, the others had remained out there, tending to those wounded in the siege, making ready what they could for the coming storm—twiddling their fingers and waiting for bullets to start flying.

His head threatened to crack in two, like a boiling engine head doused in cold water. To make this discovery now, when they might be snuffed out any moment. How could providence be so cruel?

“Mr Hadad?” Evelyn stood at his shoulder, her calculated stare trained upon the radio.

“We’re picking up three transmissions, now. The Scottish distress signal—still on a loop; some kind of music that seems to be mixed on automatic, I think perhaps some old radio station server that somehow survived; and an emergency broadcast message, also on a loop. The latter two have opened up in just the past few hours.”

“Opened up? You mean to say you discovered them? How could you have overlooked them all this time?”

Lincoln shook his head. “Mark my words: in my years I have scoured every part of the spectrum time and time again. These broadcasts were not there before.”

“And these new ones weren’t there yesterday,” added Latif.

She glowered accusingly at the radio. “You’re sure?”

“Trust me.”

“I trust very little in this world, Mr Hadad. I need you to stop working on this curiosity this minute. Our scouts in the northern counties have returned to report an army marching on New Canterbury. I’m afraid we don’t have long left before…” She cleared her throat. “We haven’t long left. I need you to spend whatever time we have remaining on strengthening our defences.”

Latif gaped. “There’s nothing left to do. I promise you.”

“Still, it would be time better spent, just in case something occurs to you.”

Lincoln shook his head. “No, he will stay.”

Evelyn rounded on him. “I know what this means to you, Oliver. I really do. But we can’t afford this distraction, not now.”

“This
distraction
might save us!” Latif cried.

She blinked and turned a cold eye on him. “Explain.”

Latif blushed. Astonished at his own audacity, he reached out and grasped her shawl. “Madame, the Blanket really is breaking. If we wait, other frequencies will open up. I’m sure of it.”

Lincoln cut across him, looking her in the eye, ignoring her troubled frown. “We have just discovered another. It is open.”

“You mean…?” Evelyn’s face had fallen slack.

“We may be able to transmit,” Lincoln said. He too now clutched at Evelyn’s shawl, and a youthful smile spread over his face. “Evvie, we may be able to call for help.”

Silence reigned for a few moments, so potent that Latif could hear every footstep up on the catwalks outside. He watched Evelyn’s face go through the same transformations that his own had: shock, rising hope, relief, then a troubled glitter that threatened to dash it all.

“Yes,” he said, “it relies on somebody else out there listening.”

Her lips had become firm and unyielding once more. “Nobody has bothered fixing radios in some time, Mr Hadad. You know this as well as I.”

“Nobody
here.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who haven’t given up. A few scholars, experimentalists, tinkerers.”

“You underestimate how very fortunate you are to have the resources of the Alliance at your disposal,” she said distantly. “Out there, it is about survival and little else… Nobody will have bothered for this long.”

“They will! I know somebody will, somewhere.”

“Mr Hadad, we don’t have time for this.”

He burst out, “Well we damn well better make time! We have a chance here. We can’t let it slip through our fingers.”

She shook her head. “Waste of time,” she muttered.

Lincoln sighed. “Evvie, listen to me. Somebody put this radio down in that vault under the airport, shielded it somehow from the End. Somebody knew they would need it, perhaps because they knew that eventually the airwaves would be free again.”

“We can never know what they knew,” she hissed.

“No. We can never know. But the fact remains: somebody foresaw the Blanket fracturing. And that means perhaps others knew.” He swallowed, his turkey neck throbbing.

Evelyn pulled herself free. “Very well. Stay in here, do your work.” She blinked harshly. “I hope you’re right, Mr Hadad.”

“So do I,” he said with a meek grimace.

She left in a whirl of shawl, and the workshop door clanged shut behind her.

Lincoln sat beside Latif, and their combined gaze rested on the lump of wood and metal until all the world seemed to fade once more.

“Do you really think somebody might hear us?” Latif said.

Lincoln sketched busily, drawing out plans for a broadcast antenna. “I have never been a man of faith,” he said quietly, then ever so briefly met Latif’s eye, “but there comes a first time in one’s life for everything.”

As dusk fell, Alexander gathered up the refugees’ leavings from his lawn, bundled them under a tarp, and loaded them onto a waggon. Slowly, savouring the labour, he set off down the street, hauling it from the city under the great flocks of wheeling pigeons. He was fully sober now, but the wave of embarrassment he’d expected hadn’t come. What Allie had said had stuck: all he could do was play the hand he’d been dealt.

After they had cleaned him up and forced some soup into him, he had gathered his will and set out for the cathedral. It had taken every scrap of self-respect he had left to walk through those doors and face the people inside; his people, those he had lifted from their former lives and brought to this place, moulded to service his dream of a better world. Those who now stood to be torn to pieces because of what he had done.

In his mind’s eye they had swarmed him, cut him down where he stood in the doorway, and paraded his body through the streets.

Instead, they had only stared as they had always stared, with the same acquiescent nods, even from the depths of their prisons of perpetual terror. Walking along the parapet had felt like a mile-long hike, but by the time he had reached Agatha standing by her podium, he felt something like his old self again.

“You’re back,” she said quietly.

“I’ve been back for a while.”

“No. That wasn’t you. Now you’re back.”

He had taken her into his arms, not caring if she fought him off in front of all those people—God knew he deserved it. “I’ve done such terrible things, Aggie,” he muttered. “I’ve put us all here.”

She pulled him to arm’s length, and all the memories they shared throbbed between them. “You did what nobody else could,” she said. “For better or worse. But don’t think for a secon’ it wasn’t what we all wanted. You’ve got the gift of the gab, Alex, but you always forgot one thing: people aren’t stupid. They ain’t your flock, some rabble set up to follow you into darkness. We’re all people, and we all believe. We all did this. An’ we could never repay the debt we owe you, not in ten thousand years.”

Alexander glanced to the majesty of the cathedral, its high ceilings and ornate carvings, everything of the Old World they stood to lose. “We’re about to lose everything. Look at them… They’re so afraid.”

All those pale faces, looking furtively at the two robed figures by the podium, peeking from hundreds of nests amongst the pews.

So many faces…

Her hand on his elbow had brought his eyes back to her, and her stony glare cut into him. “You think tha’ matters? You think bein’ afraid of the end means the journey wasn’t worth it? If we were goin’ to do it all over again, knowing we’d end up here, I’d do it all the same way. ’Cause even getting the chance to
live
that dream was worth everything. We did what I never thought we could: we stood up for what we believed in.” She punched him on the arm. “We gave it a shot.”

“I could have done it better.”

“Stop that blabber. You look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t do more than any other person could have done.” She steered him to face the podium. “Now, one last time, be the one we need, tell us a story.”

Alexander had turned to the cathedral then, to all those rising from the pews; the remnants of their order. He had let words come, any words. What emerged had indeed been a story, the first to come to mind: the first chapter of
Alice in Wonderland.

Presently he hauled the wagon across the city limits and towards the hills. He mouthed the words of that story now, a story he had read to a little boy with emerald eyes, so long ago. He reached a clearing in the grass, and he began unloading the refugees’ things, laying them out where he knew they would find them if they still lurked in the trees somewhere close by. As he worked, the warm glow the story had brought fizzled out.

The truth was he could have done so much better. None of them, not even Lucian, knew the truth of what he had done. Why James would never stop, not even when they were all dead; why he wouldn’t halt until every last scrim of the Old World had been scoured from the Earth.

Alexander laid everything out neatly and returned to the city, dragging the empty waggon in his wake, already missing the burn in his shoulders. Pain felt good, felt right. He needed to pay at least some penance before the end.

I’ll settle for a sleepless night
, he thought as he returned home, and the sun set on his city for what he knew, quite simply knew, was the last time.

Norman clutched his coat tighter around him, curled in a pile of hay. It was warm enough, but he couldn’t shake the chill in his chest, ever-present as a shard of ice stuck through his heart. They had walked all day until their feet had been worn raw, across a landscape still smouldering with wreckage. They avoided London, skirting its edge for fear of remnant splinter groups of James’s army or hostile refugees hiding out in the dense city sprawl; but they had been close, so very close, that the tower had been visible from across the Thames, lighting up all of Canary Wharf, one beacon ablaze in the dark.

Would it still shine when the sun fell tomorrow?

They had almost stopped too late, the sun having grown so low that they had barely discerned the barn by its silhouette. All the while, the cold had run rampant through him, and he wondered whether it would ever fade.

“Billy,” he muttered.

Silence, a few snores from Richard’s direction, somewhere out of sight.

Then tiny and soft and perfectly awake: “Yes?”

“Do you feel it too?”

Another pause. “Yes.”

He nodded, couldn’t think of anything to say.

Only a thousand questions I could never ask
, he thought.

He was exhausted and every part of him ached in throbbing cycles, but sleep seemed so far away, the most abstract of ideas. Across from him he spied Robert lying on his back, the whites of his eyes glowing in the slivers of moonlight filtering down through the thatch. Norman thought he had never seen eyes so very vivid and wired, in perpetual glare as Robert’s that evening; as though the cycle of day and night itself were an insult from destiny.